Mountain West Round-up: Week 1

Week one in the Mountain West is in the books and we had another great weekend of football. Oh by the way, football is back! Hawaii technically started their season a week ago, but the rest started this week. There was a lot of lopsided scores this week, some of them in favor of the Mountain West some of them.. well, better luck next week. At the time of this writing it is now 10pm in Laramie and the Wyoming and Northern Illinois game as not yet kicked off.

The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors made another cross country road trip to face Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines. That trip didn’t go very well. The Rainbow Warriors suffered a 63-3 loss in Ann Arbor. Boise State made a trip across the country and beat up on Louisiana-Lafayette. Colorado State lost a really bad game to their in-state rival Colorado in Denver. Utah State and Weber State played the first game ever broadcast by Twitter. Tony Sanchez’s second season at UNLV started with a 63-3 victory over FCS Jackson State.

FCS Cal Poly gave Nevada more than they would have liked and ended up in overtime. Cal Poly has never been an easy out for Mountain West teams and Nevada was the latest team to get a scare from the Mustangs. New Hampshire made a trip across country to play San Diego State and lost 31-0. I’m guessing New Hampshire wished they still had Chip Kelly running their offense against the Aztecs. Abilene Christian put up a fight for a while, but ultimately was beat down by Air Force.

Scores

Michigan 63 Hawaii 3

Boise State 45 Louisiana Lafayette 10

Air Force 37 Abilene Christian 21

Tulsa 45 San Jose State 10

New Hampshire 0 San Diego State 31

Nebraska 43 Fresno State 10

Northern Illinois 34 Wyoming 40

Weber State 6 Utah State 45

South Dakota 21 New Mexico 48

Jackson State 13 UNLV 63

Colorado State 7 Colorado 44

Cal Poly 27 Nevada 30

Player of the Week

Thomas Sperbeck, Boise State. Sperbeck had six receptions, 130 yards, and one touchdown in Boise State’s victory over Louisiana-Lafayette.

– Colorado State losing to Colorado is one thing, but to lose by 37 points? That’s unbelievable. The Rams were supposed to perhaps contend for a Mountain West title, but getting scrubbed by a Pac12 bottom dweller is not how you make a case for Big 12 membership.

– Schedule makers didn’t do Hawaii any favors by booking them in back to back weeks traveling a ridiculous distance. They should have had a week off between those two contests. Honolulu to Sydney to Honolulu to Ann Arbor and back to Honolulu just isn’t how you keep the grades up of your student athletes.

– Without watching the game and looking at it on the surface it appears that Boise State might be a pretty good team this year. Drubbing Louisiana-Lafayette on the road is impressive. Boise State isn’t getting a lot of attention this year given the amount of success that Houston is having. Boise State needs to be rooting for Houston to lose a contest and take care of business on their end.

– Brett Rypien and Thomas Sperbeck are two names that we’re going to see in this blog a lot, I have a feeling. They do pretty good things with the football in their hands.

– As we discovered at the tailgates in Laramie this weekend… don’t put Vegas money down on San Jose State on the road. You will lose your money.

– Great win for Wyoming over Northern Illinois. This Wyoming team is much better than last year.